


Pareidolia

by EvilMuffins



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: F/M, Fix-it gone wrong, Glitches in the Matrix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-27 10:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8397349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilMuffins/pseuds/EvilMuffins
Summary: It's another bright, sunny day on the island... but for Nanami, something is off.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NightsMistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/gifts).



> I really liked your request for a glitched out Nanami!  
> Hope you have a Happy Halloween! :)

“The breeze feels nice today, doesn’t it, Hinata-kun?”

“The breeze feels good, doesn’t it, Hinata-kun?”

“…Nanami?”

“Hm?” She was immediately troubled by the puzzled look on Hinata’s face. Was there something wrong with what she said? She had thought that she had been getting better at speaking to people lately, what with having people other than her creator to interact with.

“You just repeated the exact same thing twice in row. Are you feeling okay?”

He reached out to feel her forehead with the back of his hand.

He reached out to place a concerned hand on her elbow.

Nanami jerked backward. He had only moved his arm once, how could she have felt his touch in two separate places at the very same time?

“I…I have to go.” Nanami rushed off across the beach, back toward the direction of her cabin.

Maybe if she were to lie down for a while, she might feel better. It was worth a try at any rate. Perhaps she had strained her eyes playing too many games that morning.

Of course, Nanami knew that wasn’t the truth, but at times pretending to herself that she were human like the others helped her to better engage with them as their field trip chaperone. At times, when they all ate together, or played on the beach, it was easy to forget herself.

“Ah, Nanami-san!” Yukizome greeted her, just as she stepped out of her own near-by cabin. “You’re looking unusually energetic today. I don’t usually see you running!”

It was true- Nanami had found herself feeling far more energetic than usual lately. She couldn’t remember the last time she had found herself stifling a yawn.

“I’m just going to lay down for a bit in my cabin…I think,” She replied, turning the handle to her door.

Her teacher, however, looked puzzled. “Are you sure you need to? You look so well and all. Did jogging over here wear you out?”

“Something like that,” Nanami said before shutting her door and immediately lying back on the bed.

Now that she stopped to think about it, had she seen Yukizome-sensei at breakfast? Or any time during the previous day, for that matter?

Nanami sat up, pulling her knees close to her chest. The more she thought about it, the more she realised that she didn’t have a single memory of Yukizome being on the island with them until now.

Something must be horribly wrong with her programming, she thought, becoming increasingly alarmed. But who could she turn to for help? Monomi…or was it Usami? She could hardly even remember her co-chaperone’s name at this point.

She let out a sigh. Hinata was probably worried about her, saying strange things and then just running off like that. She should probably go back and apologise, but what if she did something strange again, to worry him further? Although he often acted as the group's resident stick-in-the-mud, Nanami knew well that he cared about everyone more than nearly anyone else.

Well, she couldn’t stay locked up in her cabin forever. Whatever was happening to her, sitting around wasn’t going to fix it… probably.

On the other hand, one round of Gala Omega to calm her nerves certainly wasn’t going to hurt.

However, her concentration was soon broken by a knock on her door. Nanami shut the Gamegirl down as quickly as she had started it up. “Come in.”

“You shouldn’t let just anyone in like that without checking who it is first,” Hinata scolded as he shut the door behind him.

“What if it was the murderer?”

What a strange thing to say on such a peaceful fieldtrip, Nanami thought, though she held her tongue.

“You seemed like you weren’t feeling well today,” Hinata said, sitting down beside her on the bed. “Do you need me to get Tsumiki for you?”

Nanami shook her head. “No…I think it was all of the sunshine on the beach getting to me. I should be fine now that I’ve rested.”

Hinata looked less than convinced. “Alright, if you’re sure. Everyone was thinking of having dinner together over in the diner tonight. I can walk you over.”

Nanami smiled. “I’d like that.”

The two exited the cabin together, however, as Nanami glanced across the way, the name-plate she saw caused her to do a double-take at .

It now read ‘Tsumiki’ rather than ‘Yukizome’ as it had less than an hour earlier.

Nanami paused. “Hinata-kun, I-“

She had to say something. Needed to, but it was as if her lips had been sewn shut. Her suddenly paralysis became even more terrifying as Hinata came to an abrupt stop beside of her, seemingly frozen as well.

It was as if the screen in one of her games had frozen up, or rather, as if the game had been frozen for quite some time, to the point where a ghost of the image remained on screen, even after the TV was unplugged.

He was fading- or she was.

Everything was black.

* * *

 

Hinata stood, solemnly staring at the wall outlet for a few moments while the pulled plug dangled from his hand, as if the cord were a lifeline.

Tsumiki placed a quivering hand on his shoulder. “It’s- It’ll be alright. We’ll try again. You…can do it!”

Hinata shook his head, snapping himself out of it with a crooked smile. “Yeah.”

He turned his attention to the girl at the other end of the cord, Nanami Chiaki, resting in the very same pod he had been just weeks earlier. How ironic that their roles should be reversed like this, he thought, brushing a lock of hair from her forehead, careful to avoid Tsumiki’s careful stitching work on the wound there.

After all that had happened, by some miracle, they had been able to recover the body.

It had started with Tsumiki being distraught over what she had done to her friend. The others, the more sensitive among them at least, had tried to assure her that it wasn’t her fault, she didn’t have control over her actions when she had pushed Nanami to her doom. Their words hardly reached her however, Tsumiki still insisting that there must be something she could do. Finally, they found her stitching up the lifeless Nanami’s wounds.

 _“It’s the l-least I could do for her…”_ She replied between sobs.

While the others exchanged uncomfortable glances, Hinata’s mismatched eyes lit up with an idea.

While Tsumiki worked day and night at putting her body together, Hinata concentrated on her mind. The Neo World program still existed; it could still be used so long as he made certain that any trace of Junko was wiped out completely. What was left of Kamukura in him could be used to fix this, he was certain of it; he owed it to her to make this work.

Her body wasn’t perfect. Their Togami, the Imposter, did his very best with his stage make up to cover the flaws, however, he was unused to working on people besides himself.

The girls had done their best to replace her ruined uniform with things they had brought on the boat with them after the Future Foundation incident. Eventually the group settled on an oversized hoodie that had been salvaged by Komaeda, since it became clear that he never planned to changed out of his usual green one. Hinata had agreed that she would like it.

Once she was whole in body- as much as she could ever be, though she would never be quite the same- Hinata lowered her into the pod. Nidai had offered to carry her, however Akane had stopped him. Even she had picked up on what this meant to Hinata.

The machine was plugged in, the switch flipped. Hinata and the others would be AI the her to now.

However, the program kept crashing before Nanami’s mind could reap any true benefits, a combination of Hinata’s tweaking of the program mechanics in a way they were never meant to be used, combined with whatever the Junko AI had taken out to fit herself in, a brick in place of a puzzle piece. The hope was to combine whatever was left of the Nanami in the system with whatever could be salvaged from her physical mind, however the chances were beginning to look grim. 

Even so, after two attempts at hooking her into the system, and taking her back out again, Nanami was able to stand, to walk, shambling along so long as she was aided, even though speaking- or any form of expression, it seemed- was still far beyond her.

More uncomfortable glances accompanied the newly resurrected Nanami through the halls just as often as Hinata did.

He had heard the whispers.

' _Still dead...'_

‘ _Zombie’._

And, now, crouched beside her pod for the umpteenth time, he was almost starting to agree with them, that she couldn’t be fixed, and would remain a lifeless shell. …No, he couldn’t let himself think like that. It wasn’t right that all of them were okay except for her. They had to keep trying.

Nearly echoing his thoughts, Tsumiki began to speak again, “Maybe it’s my fault… I’m only a nurse, not…not a doctor. Maybe I stitched her up wrong, or, or I misunderstood the labels on the medications Kimura-senpai left behind…”

“No,  it’s definitely not you, and it’s not me. We just have to-“

However, he was interrupted by a soft, sleepy voice.

“…Hinata-kun?”

 

_end_


End file.
